Bamboo Style

350 Pages·2002·16.97 MB·English

by  Gale Beth Goldberg

Bamboo Style
Gale Beth Goldberg
BAMBOO STYLE DIGITAL EDITION V1.0
Text © 2002 Gale Beth Goldberg Photographs © 2002 as noted
http://home.earthlink.net/~montecito/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without
written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.
Gibbs Smith, Publisher PO Box 667
Layton, UT 84041
Orders: 1.800.835.4993
www.gibbs-smith.com
ISBN: 978-1-4236-2151-5
To the memory of my father, Meyer Goldberg, who, by his example,
showed me the wisdom in tzdakah (giving from the heart), tikkun olam
(repairing the world), being an active participant in community, and
teaching the next generation.
To my familial matriarch, Ethel Shirley Rosenbluth Goldberg, and my
sibling, Dr. Lawrence H. Goldberg, who have been constant sources of
nourishment and support.
And to the special takenoko—bamboo children—in my life: Samantha,
Ryan, and Benjamin.
Acknowledgments
With my spirit, I give thanks and express my gratitude. In the spirit of this
bamboo book, I have merged the images of bamboo with the people who have
made contributions to the creation of Bamboo Style.
A birth. Building a book instead of building a building.
Of love and passion, obsession and compulsion.
So many people have participated in the realization of this compilation of
bamboo in so many Ways.
In gratitude, I thank artists, artisans, architects, authors, bamboo believers,
constructors, contractors, connectors, crafters, devotees, dwellers, designers,
engineers, enthusiasts, experts, earthlinkage, FedExers, financial supporters
(ABS, SoCal ABS, NCCABS, NEABS, EARF), furniture makers, friends,
gregariousness of flowerings, growers, green doers, green gardeners, gardens,
google, GS & GSP, habitués, homeowners, horticulturists, indefatigable interior
designers, iron grass-vegetable steel, jewelers, knowers, lovers, landscape
architects, language, manifesters, manufacturers, musicians, MACintosh experts,
my magnanimous editor madge, nursery people, olam, plantations, professors,
photographers, painters, pandas, the queen, rhizomatic worldwide network,
sculptors, sellers, teachers all along the Way, umbrella makers, voices of
bamboo speaking their bamboo truths and wisdom, writers, wonderment of
bamboo, xamples, young shoots, and zealots.
Another tropical rainstorm changes from torrents to drizzle.
The heavy, dark gray clouds dissolve as an azure blue sky becomes the backdrop
for the sage-green, tapering, giant grass stalks of the bamboo forest.
Heavy winds have become gentle zephyrs. Shades of jade color the bamboo
culms, or stalks, and their arching branches ending in clusters of lancet-like
leaves.
They speak in whispering voices: a moan, a creak, an exhalation.
A bamboo grove is a sacred place where one goes to listen, where one goes to
observe the new shoots rapidly elongating as they stretch upward.
A bamboo grove is where one goes to touch the smooth, vertical fibers regularly
divided and reinforced by horizontal interruptions.
Bamboo is many things to many people.
It embodies the interconnectedness of all life on this planet:
To grow and cultivate a plant that nourishes the soil, soul, and the grower.
To harvest the plant, treat it against unwanted beetles, and prepare the stock of
cut culms for transport.
To distribute the readily renewable resource to the right places.
To be utilized in more than a thousand ways by skillful designers, craftspeople,
manufacturers and their teams of transformers.
To be exposed to and appreciate the value of bamboo.
To have bamboo in your possession—living or crafted.
Engage actively in this inter-lifecycle and you become a part of the
consciousness to sustain and preserve the earth’s global resources.
Bamboo Style
Table of Contents
Foreword by Linda Garland
Introduction